Gay Marriage: Wedge Issue in Wealthy Suburbs?

Much has been made of the political implications of President Barack Obama’s announcement this week that he personally supports gay marriage. The news had hardly broken in Washington before conversations quickly turned to what it means for the 2012 election.

Look at the two maps below derived from an analysis of Census 2010 data by Gary J. Gates of UCLA’s Williams Institute. The top shows the number of same-sex households in the U.S. by county in 2000. The bottom shows those households in 2010.

2000 map:

2010 map:

That map gets a lot more purple between 2000 and 2010. And that’s not just because places with many same-sex households got more of them, but also because same-sex households expanded into more places over that time.

Mr. Gates believes that in some of those very dark rural counties – like those in rural north and south – the high numbers are due to small sample sizes combined with large households where Census surveys were likely filled out incorrectly. But even taking those mistallies into account, the trend is unmistakable.

What this all means for 2012 is not completely clear, but when you break down those county numbers into Patchwork Nation’s 12 geographic/demographic county types, some interesting patterns emerge. There are three county types that sit well above the national average for same-sex households – the big city Industrial Metropolis, collegiate Campus and Careers and the wealthy Monied Burbs. Those three types have, respectively, 7.4, 6.4 and 6.3 same-sex households per 1,000. The national county average is 5.5 same-sex households per 1,000.

That means people in those counties are more likely to know gay and lesbian couples and they are probably more likely be sympathetic to the idea of gay marriage. A Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey from 2008 broken down with Patchwork Nation’s county types found that 60 percent of the people who live in those three county types said “homosexuality as a way of life should be accepted.”

That’s potentially very significant for 2012. Democrats always win the Campus and Careers and Industrial Metropolis counties by large amounts, but Monied Burbs can be close and are often decisive. In other words, gay marriage could be a wedge issue in the suburbs that helps Mr. Obama and hurts presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney, who supports a constitutional ban on gay marriages.

The Patchwork Nation breakdown also shows there are some places where Mr. Obama’s gay marriage announcement likely won’t go over well. In the culturally conservative Evangelical Epicenters, agricultural Tractor Country counties and the Mormon Outposts, the number of same-sex households is far below the national average – 3.3, 2.2 and 2.1 households per 1,000 respectively. But any losses in those places aren’t likely to matter to Mr. Obama. He will almost certainly lose in them by large margins.

And while there have been question of whether Mr. Obama’s support of gay marriage could hurt him with African Americans, in the most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll 64% of blacks said a candidate’s gay marriage position would not affect their vote – 12 points higher than the similar figure for whites.

But the real 2012 issue for Mr. Obama may lie in states like Colorado, Florida and Ohio. A few thousand votes here or there could be the difference between winning and losing those states. What do these same-sex household numbers tell us about the impact of his statement on that critical turf? It might help him on the whole – those states have more same-sex households than average when taken together – but the individual pictures are a bit more complicated.

For instance, his new stance would arguably help him in Colorado where there are many same-sex households around populous Denver. It might help him in southern Florida, but it wouldn’t in the north – where there are many Evangelical Epicenters – and the I-4 corridor in the state’s center is hard to judge.

Click for bigger map.

And in Ohio, which many analysts consider a true anyone-could-win tossup, the announcement might hurt Mr. Obama. Ohio has many small-town Service Worker Center counties that lean Republican, but that can also provide Democrats with many votes. Those counties have lower numbers of same-sex households and, in national surveys, they tend to be less sympathetic to “homosexuality as a way of life.”

Does that mean Mr. Obama would have to write off those counties in Ohio or Florida’s I-4 corridor now? Or that he has Colorado sewn up? Not at all. While Gay marriage is the topic de jour, this election still figures to be about the economy. And past polls have also shown that gay marriage simply doesn’t rate high on the list of issues people vote on (though those polls were taken pre-announcement).

What it does mean is the 2012 campaign has a new wrinkle and national figures concerning “what people think about gay marriage” aren’t going to matter as much as the individual circumstances on the ground in different communities. And those communities and their understanding of the issue are changing fast.

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